Medieval orthodox temple of St. Petka Samardjiyska
Half-buried medieval chapel of the saddlers' guild, with a crypt and centuries of layered murals.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Church of St Petka of the Saddlers in Sofia goes underground, to a small half-buried church that the city's packsaddle makers once kept as their own. It follows the excavators who opened its crypt in the nineteen fifties, and the hope that one skeleton might belong to Vasil Levski, Bulgaria's hanged revolutionary hero. Best heard from the underpass railing, looking down at the thick brick-and-stone walls.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Boyana Church
Small medieval church with lifelike 1259 frescoes and donor portraits at the foot of Vitosha.
Sofia Church of St. George
Fourth-century red-brick rotunda with layered medieval frescoes and a ring of painted prophets in its dome.
Sofia Balkan Palace
Grand neoclassical hotel from the fifties, its courtyard holding a Roman-era rotunda and ruins.
Dragalevski Monastery "Assumption of the Virgin Mary"
Small fifteenth-century mountain church with knightly saint frescoes, set in a working nunnery.
Kremikovtsi Monastery
Hillside Orthodox monastery with a small stone church painted with rare fifteenth-century frescoes.
St. Sofia Basilica
Early Christian brick basilica whose name the capital took, with a revered poet's grave behind its altar.